All Colors Bleed Together
by Lisa Telramor
Summary: It is personal and private, the way Cesia and Rath choose to remember those they have lost. Rath/Cesia


_AN: For the prompt: Any, any het or femslash, kissing different coloured things (food, non-toxic paint) onto each other's lips/bodies._

 _It's not rally sexy the way I'm guessing the prompter wanted, but it's what came out of it. _ As always, anything involving Rath and Cesia will be a little twisted by Rath's self-hatred and their odd relationship._

~O~O~O~

Cesia's lips leave streaks of red on Rath's body, the deep red of blood that she has sworn to keep from staining his skin again. The color seems perfect. The only way it would be better, Rath thinks, were if it were actually blood. But he knows without asking that Cesia wouldn't approve. Her dark hair falls in waves across his lap as she leans to stain his lips red with her own.

It's an act of claiming him. An act without pain or blood or cruelty because in her own cruel way, Cesia knows he would enjoy those things for all the wrong reasons and will not let him indulge. Instead of love bites, she leaves open-mouthed kisses and lipstick smears. Instead of clawing her nails across his back, she leaves trails of paint to mark him with infuriating gentleness. Rath lets her. When she pushes him back, he bares his throat, but she leaves a caress of Kai-stern's blue along his cheek. That too is a strange mixture of sadistic comfort that he has come to expect from her. She doesn't let him wallow in self-pity, but she also doesn't let him forget his greatest failings.

When she finally pulls back, there are many colors on him—blue from her finger tips, white in broad streaks from her thumbs, black in tiny streaks from where her mascara brushed into his skin, still wet from its application, yellow on the backs of her knuckles leaving divots and smears where she rested them for moments or caressed. And of course the red. There is more red than any other color. It's fitting for red to be most prevalent. He was the fire dragon knight, and he had stolen the red officer's orb. He had shed more blood than the other knights combined, and it is on his shoulders Lykouleon's death lies.

Cesia looks at him with gentle firmness. "You need to remember you're important to all of us," she says, leaving blue and yellow smears on his abdomen. They mix in a streak of green. "You need to remember that we are here even if we aren't inside of you."

"I already promised not to die again," Rath says. "Isn't that enough?"

"No." Cesia smiles with red, red lips. "If you're afraid to lose us, you can mark us too."

"Starting with you?"

For the first time that night, Rath touches Cesia, cradling her close. She goes without protest as Rath leans his head on her chest with her settled in his lap. "I'm not going to leave you."

"But you could." He can only hear the child who lost too many people he loves in his voice. Rath never has grown up, really, just gotten bigger and better at hiding his pain. He knows Cesia, out of the few that are left, understands this. He dips his fingers in the paint, a color for each finger.

Kai-stern's blue is brushed across her eyelids. It is Rune's blue as well, only Rune's now that Kai-stern is gone. White is a dot on her forehead because Alfeegi used to think too much and a black dot beside it for Tetheus. The light and wind dragons might be gone, but their presences weren't forgotten by Rath or Cesia.

Yellow lines run up away from her knuckles as Rath extends them. Hands, because Thatz is defined by his hands and his appetite in Rath's mind. It is Ruwalk's color as well, and was Ruwalk's color first, but it is Thatz's color first and foremost in Rath's mind these days.

Red is for last. Red is Rath's color, a stolen color meant for Gil and Bierrez but will always be Rath's color because he selfishly claimed it for himself. It doesn't matter that he is Dragon Lord now or that by all rights he should be Light dragon's master now and associated with white. White is too pure for him and if Cesia won't let him claim the darkest black parts of his self, then he can hold on to the raw red wounds of everything he once was.

He wonders if she knows just how many meanings red holds for him. As he paints his lips crimson, he decides it doesn't matter. He leans forward and presses a kiss over her heart.

Love is not something he can speak of.

Love is not something he is sure he feels the way others feel since it is spires of guilt wrapped up in destructive-protective impulses which he channels into lies and masks and deceit.

He is pretty sure he loves her as much as he is capable of loving. Is it too deep a love when you'd burn the world and yourself along with it for them? Or is it just a selfish, shallow love to lose the will to live without said loved one to support him? Cesia would know. Cesia doesn't seem to love the normal way either though, so perhaps they will actually manage with their twisted, broken emotions.

She sighs when he lifts his head, pets his hair like he is a child. She can see past his moods most days now and can tell when he is falling into a guilt spiral. "I'm here. I'm here and we are facing the future together."

Covered in her marks and seeing his own on her, Rath can almost believe it. No matter how many times he plays it in his head, this isn't the future he wanted, but it isn't an empty future either. So he leans back to rest his face in the hollow of her throat and hear the blood rush through her veins and the beat of her heart and the rush of her lungs. He can smell the life from her as the marks she gave him mingle with the marks he gave her.

When Cesia asks him to come to bed, Rath goes and feels more hopeful than before that this new uncertain future will work out.

~O~O~O~

 _An extra note:I know that at the end of the manga Rath stands in front of grave stones saying the dragons will return. But the point is, he's standing in front of the grave markers he's made over the years, his memorials, and it just doesn't seem likely the dragons will be returning in Rath's lifetime. I apologize for any details that might not quite be compatible with canon. While I love this series and have read it several times, it is also a twisty-turny snake that is really confusing to keep straight sometimes. -_-_


End file.
